The relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies in Malaysian Chinese and White Australian women: a dot probe study

House, T., Wong, H.K., Samuel, N.W.-Y., Stephen, I.D. ORCID: 0000-0001-9714-8295, Brooks, K., Bould, H., Attwood, A. and Penton-Voak, I., 2023. The relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies in Malaysian Chinese and White Australian women: a dot probe study. Royal Society Open Science. (Forthcoming)

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Abstract

Studies suggest that an attentional bias to thin bodies is common amongst those with high levels of body dissatisfaction, which is a risk factor for, and symptom of, various eating disorders. However, these studies have predominantly been conducted in Western countries with body stimuli involving images of White people. In a preregistered study, we recruited 150 Malaysian Chinese women and 150 White Australian women for a study using standardised images of East Asian and White Australian bodies. To measure attentional bias to thin bodies, participants completed a dot probe task which presented images of women who self-identified their ethnicity as East Asian or as White Australian. Contrary to previous findings, we found no evidence for an association between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies. This lack of association was not affected by participant ethnicity (Malaysian Chinese vs. White Australian) or ethnic congruency between participants and body stimuli (own-ethnicity vs. other-ethnicity). However, the internal consistency of the dot probe task was poor. These results suggest that either the relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies is not robust, or the dot probe task may not be a reliable measure of attentional bias to body size.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Royal Society Open Science
Creators:	House, T., Wong, H.K., Samuel, N.W.-Y., Stephen, I.D., Brooks, K., Bould, H., Attwood, A. and Penton-Voak, I.
Publisher:	Royal Society, The
Date:	20 July 2023
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.31234/osf.io/an59j DOI 1784332 Other
Rights:	CC by Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	21 Jul 2023 10:59
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 10:59
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49414

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